


Bound To Get Burned

by hitlikehammers



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (That Maybe He Tries To Drown in Scotch Sometimes—Fine. Sue Him.), Bucky Barnes Feels, Captain America: Civil War Fix-It, Complicated Relationships, Foursomes in Wartime, Guilt, Love in wartime, Love/Hate, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Multi, Or To Not Help Bucky Barnes With Stark Trauma-Technology, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark Friendship, Pepper Potts Is a Good Bro, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), That is Tony's Question, Threesomes in Wartime, To Help Bucky Barnes With Stark Trauma-Technology, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Really Needs To Not Name Technology B.A.R.F.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-07-19 15:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7367383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark has a heart. </p><p>Tony Stark wishes said heart didn't lead him reluctantly to Wakanda to try and fix the monster who killed his parents. Tony Stark wishes he never knew about said-monster and his star-spangled soulmate's undying devotion, not to mention their war-torn love affair with Tony's dear old dad. Tony Stark wishes said-monster didn't remind him of caves and sand and ghosts behind his own eyes in the mirror for so long, for too long, for always. Tony Stark wishes he didn't feel <i>anything</i> in the face of Bucky Barnes. </p><p>But Tony Stark has a heart.</p><p>And god<i>damn</i>, he wishes he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This may stay what it is: a glimpse into where my vision of Tony Stark—which hasn't been a vision the MCU has shared so much of late—eventually gives, rather than hates.
> 
> Alternatively: this will be the first chapter of my next reenactment of the IM2 scene where Tony looks himself in the mirror and asks if he's got anymore bad ideas—meaning it'll lead to a threesome with heavy backstory, hate sex that turns into love sex, lots of angst, and the kind of shared life experience that certain people were always looking for, turning up in the strangest of places.
> 
> We shall see, I suppose. I hope you enjoy what it is, for now, either way <3
> 
>  
> 
> Love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), as ever: encourager, enabler, beta, and impossibly brilliant person in all aspects and ways <3

It keeps him up at night.

There are two people in the world who are allowed to see him weak, and one of those people needs him to be strong as fuck right now. So yeah. He asked Pepper to stay with him, for a little while. After everything. And Pepper, being the prime example of all that a woman, a _human_ should be, did exactly that. Makes him eat. Meets his shaking, his gasping, his falling apart with the hot tea like his mother used to make with a splash of whiskey—the hot tea Tony’s never mentioned, or described, but Pepper, being Pepper, knows anyway.

He doesn’t go to bed, ever. Like, in his bed. Lying on the mattress. Sheets and shit.

Ever.

Yet when he wakes up in a chair, he’s covered with a blanket, a pillow under his cheek instead of a keypad. When he wakes on a couch, he finds a slim, long, familiar body curled around him that he’s clutching to without his own permission—an expression of every need he has but can’t express, can’t say in his voice, can’t stuff into words.

B.A.R.T.—which still isn’t really great, because it’s not _precisely_ telemetry, versus framing, and B.A.R.T. makes him think of _The Simpsons_ which isn’t so bad, but then also San Francisco, which is kinda that bad, but it’s still not _B.A.R.F._ so whatever, progress and that shit—but B.A.R.T., well. Tony deals with his shit via obsession, sure, it’s probably an issue he should address somehow, uh huh, it’s not really a healthy coping mechanism, fuck off.

But yes. Tony fails to deal with anything, really, but he makes shit in the meantime, and that balances out, so exactly.

Fuck _off_.

So the B.A.R.T. has made some real impressive strides in functionality, if not in name. Much more Holodeck-esque, which is fucking awesome. Moved through implant to injection to orally administered tablet for the necessary stimulation and trackers in the neural patterns to target the particular traumatic memories in question. You know, like, if someone couldn’t be sedated easily for implantation. Or like, maybe didn’t have a full set of veins on two arms or something. 

He’s an engineer. He’s just thinking through all possible scenarios. Soldiers, right. Soldiers in general have trauma. They lose limbs a lot. He needs to make sure this thing is accessible, can be used and implemented and can help people. The people who’ve seen the worst of humanity, who have done, have been forced to...

He goes to the cemetery. He’s only ever gone there out of a sense of obligation, before. He might still be going out of obligation, honestly. He’s not very good at figuring out that sort of shit; he’s not delusional enough to have missed that about himself, and he’s a pro at lying to himself, but he’s also damn well aware of the fact that he doesn’t really care to put the effort into the figuring. There are more important things.

Anyway. 

He goes to the cemetery. He only ever started to process what he felt about his parents’ death when he had a devil to blame but again: anger, stages, grief. There are a lot of quotes, lots of random cultural advice about hate, about grudges, vengeance. About the way it leaves you empty, even once it’s gone.

Tony could have killed him. He could have. He dismantled that _thing_ , that _murderer_ , and he, it—

He doesn’t feel any better, knowing that.

It keeps him up at night. The empty space that’s already there.

Fucking hell.

He’s healed, mostly. He’s not actually bitter about the damage, the physical kind. Tony Stark might not be much when it comes to feelings, might not understand much about certain things, but even he can respect what that kind of love looks like. What that much devotion and need to protect, to avenge, could create.

Steve Rogers was the first of them, after all.

And Tony appreciates people who create instead of actually messing with their fucking _feelings_.

He also appreciates scotch. And the one in front of him seems to have run out.

He frowns. The telltale click of heels and the glint of glass in his periphery tells him that Pepper’s taken pity on him.

Thank _fuck_.

Except what Pepper’s holding out to him is a box, not a bottle. 

Goddamnit.

“Remember when I left this for you?” She shakes the enshrined Mark I reactor at him, still glowing: dim, but.

Still glowing.

“I wasn’t just being a smart ass,” Pepper says plainly. “I was driving home a point.”

Tony snorts, and knocks back the vaguely-scotch flavored ice cubes in his glass. “Duly noted.”

“Because you’re a dumbass a lot of the time.”

He sets the glass back down with maybe more force than is technically required. “Duly noted.”

“Oblivious,” Pepper continues, perching gracefully on the arm of the chair Tony’s sprawled on. “Blind, like, if I didn’t have access to your medical records, I’d have questioned your vision, suggested that those absurd pink glasses get a prescription put in them.”

“They are _ruby glasses_ , thank you very much,” Tony protests immediately, because they damn well _are_ ; “and I believe that I _said_ ,” he glares at her:

“Duly. _Noted_.”

She hums. She knows him too well. He needs to find friends that don’t know him so well. That would be better, in moments like this.

Said hypothetical friends probably wouldn’t cover him with a blanket when he falls asleep in the workshop though.

Shit. 

“Can’t run from it, Tony,” Pepper reads him sagely as she lifts a perfectly manicured nail to tap the proclamation that he _has a fucking heart_. “Might be the only thing a person can’t escape while their still living.”

“Goddamn it.”

Tony isn’t entirely sure if he meant to say that out loud. Tony isn’t entirely sure it matters one bit.

Pepper holds out the ancient knock-off burner phone Steve’d dropped in the mail for him. 

“That’s an insult to modern technology,” Tony scoffs. Besides.

He hates being _handed_ things, Jesus.

Pepper discards the burner, and hands him his own StarkPhone.

“T’Challa’s personal number’s programmed in,” she says idly. “Assuming you’d rather talk to him.”

And yeah, she knows him too goddamn well. 

Plus, he probably gave himself away with _Rusted_. His shit never rusts. That was probably a red flag.

Fuck.

He’s flailing at sea a little in his own head when Pepper stands, and leans down to press lips to Tony’s forehead.

“Baby steps,” she murmurs, and, well.

The phone’s in his hand, as they say.

Or—shit. Do people say that? 

Fuck it. Whatever.

If people don’t, they should.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things never get complicated _gradually_ , now, do they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing this is a horrible idea.
> 
> I, like Tony Stark, must have asked myself in the mirror whether I had any more of those, and then I fucking went and did one of them. Awesome.

They don’t put him all the way under. More like...something like a “deep twilight state”, they say, like that’ll make any more fucking sense, like they’re actually explaining something that he can make heads or tails of.

 

Whatever. 

 

Point is: like this, whatever they do—like this? 

 

He dreams.

 

He knows it’s a dream—memories, but ones that are _dreams_ , soft around the edges, but even so inside this space he’s oddly, inexplicably clear as to what’s real and what isn’t, what’s fantasy and fallacy and actual, long-lived fact.

 

So he dreams about the past. A sweeter past, despite how it ended. 

 

__________________

 

_It hadn't taken them long to realize it: only a fool would turn his back on love, here—wherever it comes. However it looks._

_War makes that fact painfully clear._

_So while they weren’t flippant, didn’t flaunt it, he and Steve didn’t spare a single moment to touch, to taste, to feel and hold and breathe each other in—on the front, behind the trees, in the dark. That was how Bucky knew, first, how we knew that whatever they’d done to him was something bigger, something worse than just torture: he could see, clear as anything._

_He could count each and every one of Steve lashes in the pitch-fucking-black._

_But they’d spent hours they didn’t have to give, but hours they’d earned and couldn’t have possibly spent any other way, that _no one_ could have thought to _ask_ them to give up—they spent hours exploring a new body, a new heartbeat; two new bodies, two new heartbeats but only one either of them was in any mind to acknowledge and hold to as a fact at the time, but they devoted themselves as much as they ever had in a drafty tenement, mold in wood and gaps in joining, the stench of the river in summer like a fist around lungs, like smoke in the winter like a pall to press and choke: they give themselves to each other with everything, with all the heart they’d ever had but no longer with any of the fear, the restraint._

_And it’s the only beautiful thing that comes of war. It’s a beautiful thing, that could only _have_ come from war._

_Depressing shit, that. But good _god_ , was it soft, and warm, and bright like nothing else on Bucky’s skin, swift in his veins._

_And then, once Peggy was assigned to ensure Bucky’s well-being after Steve sprung his ass from captivity—once they’d made eyes across an exam room, once Bucky’s eerily, unnaturally, suddenly-perfectly-steady pulse jumped just a little under a stethoscope when his washed-out, tramped-down, worn-thin attempt at a suggestive wink that once came so easy, second nature; when after god-knows-how-many tries he _finally_ gets a flush from the unflappable Agent Carter, a pale imitation of her lips like he knows his own expression is a pale imitation of the man he’d been before they tried to hollow him out and succeeded—or so he’d thought, he hadn’t known then what _hollow_ really was: but when he made her blush, and his heart skipped just enough to spur the dry snark of the medic— _Oh, good, you’re still flesh and blood, I was starting to worry_ —by that point, it was natural, a matter of course that she fit just right in between his body and Steve’s, against Steve’s chest, wrapped around Bucky’s body: it just made sense._

_And they never asked questions of it; were smarter than to tempt fate, to start down a gift horse. They didn’t look toward a future they were so unlikely to see because there, between them, there was enough to be seen as it was. And maybe wisest of all: they didn’t read more into it than what they were, then and there: and that? That was happy. _They_ were happy, just for moments, just for heartbeats, but they were happy._

_So: Peggy was natural, like that. With them._

_Stark, though._

_Stark was more of a surprise._

_Naturally, Howard had been closer to Steve from the get-go: greatest creation, here’s a shield, yadda yadda. Naturally, Bucky’d been less than his biggest fan, because fuck calling Steve _anyone’s_ creation._

_And god help the goddamn _idiot_ who called Steve _his_ , unless his name was James Buchanan Barnes. _

_But Bucky was still the Brooklyn boy who gave his last sure night on home soil to see the flying cars of the future, and where only a fool would turn away love on the warfront, it was only slightly less moronic to spit in the face of joy: and Howard was relentless in his enthusiasm for creating, for inventing, and goddamnit all—that kind of joy was fucking contagious, and in what Howard made clear was all part of the _patented Stark charm, no seriously, I filed a patent_ , he weaseled his way into Bucky’s tolerance, amusement, fascination, camaraderie, affection…_

_It’d left both Stevie and Pegs slack-jawed when Bucky’d proposed bringing Howard to their bed—a fact that Bucky wore like a badge of honor, honestly; a fact that made Howard laugh in that way Bucky’s could feel with his mouth on Howard’s chest, parted wide around taut nipples as he gasped for Steve’s fingers stretching him, for Peggy’s sweet lips sucking him hard._

_And so they’d lived, like that: together. And they had loved._

_Good god, did they _love_._

_Until it ended. Until there was a train, and a fall, and a plane—so Bucky’s heard—and Peggy married a colleague, Howard a beautiful woman inside and out, until, until, _until_ —_

 

__________________

 

Bucky can feel it, when the tears drop through his tight-closed lashes. He can feel each drop as it crystallizes, freezes over.

 

And he continues to dream.

 

__________________

 

So: when he feels the telltale shiver through his veins, the way his barely-flinching heart starts to weigh more fully, remembering its work: when he opens his eyes and sees the face in front of him, he’d been dreaming.

 

And the first thing that escapes his frostbitten lips is a choke, half a sob at the sight of a ghost.

 

 _Howard_.

 

“Oh god,” Bucky rasps, and he feels it draw blood up from his throat, the taste all sour metal and so much less than he deserves to suffer. “I’m sorry,” he tries to reach, but there’s only one arm and it’s still held down by too soft, too comfortable bands at his wrist, and the crook of his elbow, keeping tabs on the hammer of his heart. 

 

“I’m so sorry,” he tries, and that face is a blank mask but the eyes tell him everything, all shock and confusion and rage, rage, _rage_ : ”I—”

 

Because seeing the shit Peggy had signed off on, the things she’d funded that had kept him what he was, what _they_ wanted him to be—seeing that made him hurt in every cell of his body for the possibility that she ever learned the truth, that she’d gone to her grave thinking, feeling even the slightest bit responsible because she wasn’t, she was his Pegs, she wasn’t, he—

 

But then: remembering what he did—what they made him, what he did, what they _made_ him, but he _did_ ; remembering _Howard_.

 

He’d nearly chucked it in, then and there: only thing that stayed his hand was selfishness.

 

Was the thought of Steve somewhere in the wide world, and the promise of maybe a photo somewhere to unclench his heart a little; a glimpse from a distance to ease the way he breathed: undeserved, god.

 

But _maybe_.

 

Fuck.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

“Babe,” Bucky croaks, tears hot like a brand against his still chill-touched skin. “I never, I, you know, you _know_ I, I wouldn’t, I didn’t, I,” but did he? Did Howard know, did Bucky make goddamn _sure_ Howard knew, at every possible moment, what he meant, how much he was fucking cherished? Could it have ever been _enough_ to last, or if it could last—to keep betrayal at the end from taking hold when those eyes had lost their light?

 

“I’m so fucking _sorry_ ,” Bucky sobs, and he can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_.

 

“Uh huh,” Howard says, and his voice is strange. Bucky vision is blurred; nothing makes any _sense_ as the strange voice that’s Howard but not, _not_ calls out: 

 

“Nurse Joy? Magneton’s having a bad reaction to the back-to-the-living welcome wagon.”

 

Bucky gasps for air he can’t find, and footsteps ring out in retreat as he melts back into the dark:

 

“Let me know when he’s in his right mind,” the voice ushers him into the stillness, the cold, with a edge of snark that’s almost cruel:

 

“Well. Right- _ish_.”

 

__________________

 

The sales pitch had been that all he’d need was a quick needle-jab to get this show on the road, making the sheer number of wires and nodes and sticky dots on his skin is fucking absurd, even by Bucky’s standards. And Bucky’s standards are evil-Nazi scientists on steroids, times infinity to the power of super-soldier deathlessness, so.

 

It’s _absurd_.

 

“I looked it up.”

 

Stark glances his direction, away from whatever controls apparently run this science fair apparatus; glances, but very deliberately makes no eye contact. 

 

“You what?”

 

“‘Magneton’. You think I can’t fucking Google shit, Stark?” 

 

Bucky shudders, not for any chill in the room, though there is one; not for any nerves left to worry, because there aren’t any—not for this. Certainly not for the cartoon pocket-monster magnet blob he found on that weird image site with the name that forgets all the vowels, which seems to be a 21st century thing on the whole, really. 

 

Weird.

 

The glance that had been aimed in his direction is reassigned once more to the controls.

 

“I didn’t even have a fucking arm to justify that half-assed pun, by the way,” Bucky adds idly, and yeah, fuck it: a little bit of snark in it, too; a little bit of venom of the teeny-tiny voice in him that says _it wasn’t my fault, yes it was my hands and yes it is my guilt but I didn’t want it, I didn’t think it, it wasn’t fucking me so fuck you, fuck you, god _damn_ it  all_. “Which _you_ should have known better than anyone.”

 

Stark’s posture stiffens quick, at that. Bucky doesn’t get any satisfaction from it, but then, he wasn’t aiming for that; or expecting to.

 

“Turn,” Stark finally says, not bothering to look Bucky’s way as he twirls a finger in midair to demonstrate, like he’s asking a kid in a sparkly tutu to give a twirl. 

 

“Why?”

 

Stark finally skewers him with what Bucky suspects he thinks is a really fucking powerful glare, probably. It’s also hard to take the arched eyebrow seriously, as it asks if Bucky’s _really_ that dense, when it’s paired with that absurd facial hair on the bottom.

 

Like, _seriously_ ; he’s supposed to be a billionaire. Guy’s gotta have a fucking mirror.

 

“I mean,” Bucky shrugs, scratching idly at one of the leads on his chest because he can. He has that freedom now, and it’s uncomfortable, that capacity, that ability—it’s foreign. It still feels like nicking penny candy from the corner store. 

 

“I mean, why are you _here_?” Bucky finally says it, and he’s curious, and his vitals don’t change, much as he wishes they would because a normal human’s would, just then, right now, but he’s not there yet, he may never be there and he’s not normal, he’s not quite _human_ , and Stark’s eyes narrow. Bucky just shrugs. 

 

“What’s it going to do, shock me?” Bucky scoffs, eyeing up the machine, the B.A.R.T. or whatever. “Easy. Brain damage?” he raises a challenging brow, almost, in Stark’s direction—revenge would be at the top of his list, after all, if the tables were turned. “That’ll heal quick. Paralysis? No sweat. Pain?” Bucky shakes his head, spreads his arms wide. 

 

“I know who you are, and what you’re capable of,” he says, and it’s neither praise or sneer: just a fact. 

 

And so is what follows: 

 

“There is _nothing_ even _your_ mind can fathom that will be a surprise.”

 

Stark is silent for a moment; long enough for Bucky’s understanding of the man to be negating, to be called into question.

 

“Your point?”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes, because what else is he gonna do? What else _can_ he do in the face of a truth that lives in his fucking bones, that beats in his blood because it’s a truth that’s stopped that fucking blood more times than is right, than should have to be hold inside skin, god _damn_.

 

“You don’t have to have any finesse or shit,” Bucky tells him, straight up, because _what fucking else_ is there. “Just,” he shrugs; “whatever you’re here to do, whatever brought you here and not—“

 

And Bucky doesn’t fucking _know_ , that’s the thing; that’s the thing that he became too close to, became too intimate with, that was the only lover he could take—unknowability, uncertainty, no control, no thought, no space to feel or ask or think to ask or _be_ : absolute submission, contortion, warping of everything he once was and wiping everything he had the misfortune of becoming in the after—Bucky doesn’t know why Stark is here. What Stark’s endgame is. What bullshit he thinks he’s pulling. Playing. Fucking with. Drawing out.

 

Bucky doesn’t know, and it should bother him. It doesn’t bother him. And that—

 

That’s who he was. That’s who he used to be, that’s—

 

That is _what_ he was. That is what they _made_ him.

 

That is what his _hands_ —

 

Fuck. _Fuck_.

 

Fuck it.

 

“Whatever reason you have for whatever you’re planning to do,” Bucky finally breathes out, slow and painless and weightless and half-dead with it, all of what they made him, all of what he _let_ them _make_ him—

 

“And whatever you said or showed or proved to remind them that I’m _not_ worth saving, let alone protecting,” Bucky fights a shiver in his voice, because it’d been stupid to trust that T’Challa’s people would stand by a killer forever, it’s been stupid to even _expect_ it, even to hope, good god, fucking _stupid_ ;

 

“Just do it.” 

 

Bucky looks up, and Stark’s watching him, and the jolt of the crossing of their gaze is palpable, tangible: electric, and Bucky knows the feel of a current through his frame real well. 

 

They look, and then Stark blinks, and Bucky huffs. Rolls his shoulders and lets the weight of him fall straight back and down, eyes drifting closed. 

 

“I’m not worth wasting your fucking time, Stark,” Bucky says simply, staring at the backs of his eyes that haven’t been dark in decades, that are splattered with all the horrors he carries, neverending.

 

“Unless you get off on that, long and torturous,” Bucky adds, when nothing happens; snorts at himself when Stark says nothing; relishes in some twisted way when there’s no reply.

 

Good. _Good_. He’s got no patience for dancing around whatever the fuck this is.

 

“If that’s your thing, then have at it.”

 

__________________

 

They’ve been at it for two weeks. Tony will absolutely not admit that he has no clue whether they’re making any progress.

 

But Tony has _no fucking clue_ whether they’re making any progress.

 

Steve, thankfully, had remained away since before Tony arrived, busy “resettling” his team of miscreant betrayers—and Tony says that lovingly, he really does, promise—and Barnes doesn’t seem too inclined to reach out to the man and ask him to return, now that said Murderbot is up and running again. 

 

But see, where that _should_ be the point of Tony’s main concern—dealing with Captain Red-White-and-Betrayal when he realizes a) Tony’s decided to take the resident Klondike bar, thaw it out and zap its melty innards, and b) that zapping said melty innards may or may not being doing anything, may or may not be super painful, and may or may not be more about Tony figuring out his own complex emotions, which are _emotions_ , let’s be clear about that, the broad spectrum of human bullshit that he’s really ill equipped at dealing with like a normal person but he’s not a normal person so fuck you.

 

Point is, said complex emotions aren’t _guilt_ , okay? No guilt. No. Nope. Nada. N-O spells no.

 

And the tin-man doth _not_ protest too much. Okay? Okay.

 

Right, so, that should be his main point of concern. Absolutely should be. Because Cap’s shown his true colors—pun unintended—and when Tony’d said, way back in the day, that he didn’t trust a guy without a dark side? Well, point fucking taken, and it turns out, Tony’s not sure he trusts a guy _with_ a dark side either, when it’s about to break his neck with a metal frisbee.

 

Go figure.

 

And that should very much be his major point of concern. Yep.

 

Spoiler alert, though: it’s not. Not even close. 

 

What _is_ , however, is a thing that came out of nowhere, as shit that herald fundamental paradigm changes tend to in his experience; but shit. He didn’t see this one coming _at all_.

 

He traces it back to its roots, of course, because he’s a scientist: an empiricist. And self-identifying as a playboy was not an idle thing, not mere bombast—though it could have been, easily, because Tony is Tony and well, duh. But this time wasn’t that, it was the god’s honest truth, because Tony had always enjoyed a distraction, a momentary respite from the compulsion to think and to do and to create, to envision and then to make real: and a tussle between the sheets was always a pleasurable enough way to get that done. 

 

It didn’t take long for it to become something of a favorite pastime. From there, well.

 

Money does wonders it making a thing like that more than just a pastime. 

 

So Tony has a sharp eye—you know, being an engineer and all—and if it likes to wander sometimes, sure, whatever. He’d done good with Pepper, because Pepper was, _is_ special, and Tony’s _Tony_ , and he kind of knew before they started that they’re better outside the bedroom: too much history, too much conflict, too much sacrificed between them in exchange for getting off. 

 

Tony’s sharp eye notices special things. Cars. Tech. Ideas. Faces.

 

Bodies.

 

Basically: if it’s exceptional, Tony takes note. Always has.

 

Which brings him to his _actual_ major point of concern: the way his wandering eye hasn’t been wandering so much lately. Which he does try to rationalize as stress for a while, as being overcome with those emotion-things that he’s bad at, and the science backs the fact that it’s hard to get a fucking stiffy when you’re overwhelmed by shit, and god _damn_ he’s been overwhelmed by shit, fuck if some of it (most of it, maybe, probably) has been of his own making.

 

But it’s not that his eye isn’t wandering. It’s that it’s… fixated.

 

And it’s stayed that way. Without fucking it into straying again. It’s stayed that way for hours. For days.

 

Which, well. It’s not the first time. It’s one of very _few_ times, but it’s not the first time.

 

But fuck: this time’s different. Not just because the object of his fixation’s spoken for. And said some weird shit about what Tony figures were past flings with people a little too close to home, but Tony’s trying real hard not to dwell on that just now, because honestly, that makes it just a little bit too weird, even for him.

 

Because, more specifically: the object of his fixation killed his parents and is someone he tried to kill, who tried to kill him, who he hates. _Hates_.

 

Or else: thought he did. 

 

But the thing is, Tony’s trip down learning-to-feel-like-a-fully-realized-person lane has taught him a thing or two, much as he’s tried like hell to learn absolutely nothing from it. It’s taught him to notice different things. To square with difficult things. To hurt and heal where he can, against his better judgement. Against his stubborn will.

 

And so when he looks at Barnes and recognises the shadows behind his eyes, despite the blankness of his expression, Tony sees his own reflection in the mirror, asking about bad ideas. When he feels heat in the pit of his stomach for the broad, tight muscles of Barnes’ back, his shoulders, his chest, he recognizes them as battle hewn, but more than that, built from necessity: he remembers them from a cave in the assend of nowhere, desert heat driving every heartbeat closer to oblivion. When he looks at Barnes, he sees too much of himself to keep hating, because Tony knows what it’s like to do things without knowing the ramifications, and hell.

 

He doesn’t even have the excuse of fucking torture and brainwashing to back his mistakes.

 

So if Tony stands in his luxurious Wakanda shower—luxurious, mind, even by _his_ standards, the showy bastards—and thinks about a steel grey gaze made silver for the shifting of demons underneath, if he thinks about the plains and valleys of a body lain at his disposal, warm to the touch when Tony attaches the leads despite all the cold that it’s known and if he aches to touch _more_ , if his wandering gaze has come to rest and his heart beats hard under the spray as his dick gets hard for it all beneath the shower every night for the image and idea of the man he fucking hates, well.

 

Tony’s always hated himself just a little, at the least, and yes: he sees himself in Barnes. He feels a kindred tie with the fucker, goddamnit _all_ , and hell.

 

He never did deny that he was a narcissist at heart, so probably it all makes a twisted kind of sense; probably, it was all just a little bit inevitable.

 

Again: god _damnit_.

 

__________________

 

Logically, Tony knows he’s pushing his luck. Not just with the extent of his tech’s capabilities, but with the span of time Captain Moral-fucking-Compass will allow to pass before he stops fighting the inevitable pull toward his star-crossed lover who he probably still thinks has frostbite to the nth. 

 

Tony really doesn’t want to be here when Rogers shows his face. He really _really_ doesn’t want to be here, poking and prodding and inflicting great psychological torment on Rogers’ bestie-with-benefits when the Captain decides to wander back this direction.

 

Logically, Tony should have been paying more attention to what was going on outside of Wakanda—where Barton was, for instance, or where Ms. Duplicity had holed herself, and let it be known that Tony called _that_ one years ago; he should have been.

 

Instead, he was fiddling with the brain of his parents’ murderer and calculating just the right angle at which to stand in order to hide his hard on at least ninety-percent of the time because of those muscles, those eyes, that torment, that mirror—

 

Tony’s doing _that_ enough that he should also have seen the tiny gives that even the Winter fucking Solder couldn’t hide, that the _numbers_ on the absolutely obscene number of monitors he’d hooked up should have been screeching bloody murder with; he should have seen it. He should have known.

 

Tony, however—if he’s anything in the world—is consistent. He doesn’t notice shit until it blows up in his fucking face, nine times out of ten.

 

They’re doing exactly what they’re always doing, though the settings increase every day: more intensive, more invasive, more demanding, more taxing on the body but Barnes just stands there, jaw set, face blank. He doesn’t move, he barely breathes, and his stare doesn’t waver. He doesn’t even _blink_.

 

So Tony overlooks the bags, the bruises under his eyes; how pale he is. The bloodshot eyes that, only later—too late—Tony sees bleed into burst vessels in the corners. He doesn’t bother, and hasn’t bothered, to hook the ECG up for days, because Tony knows a slippery slope when he sees it, once in awhile at least, and brushing that chest makes him come way too hard every fucking night, and Barnes’ vitals are as metronomic as Rogers’ ever were, so it doesn’t even matter, really.

 

Basically: Tony does what he always does. Overlooks the goddamn obvious.

 

They’re about an hour in when Tony even notices the slight labor in Barnes breathing, the shallowness and the way it sound like a trial, even to Tony’s eyes. Barnes’ face hasn’t shifted, his expression still unchanged, but Tony can see the heavy pulse through the skin at the neck, at the hollow of the throat even with his own puny-human vision, and it’s all over the fucking place, and Tony can only blink for it before Barnes’ eyes rolls back, his breath catches, and he falls. Flat out fucking crumbles and Tony’s eyes widen just as the neural monitors screech not a warning, but a flat out clarion of disaster as the readings go haywire and then, just, just—

 

Die.

 

“Bucky!”

 

And lo: Tony should have been paying attention to a lot of things. Because of course Steve fucking Rogers is here, now, and god knows how long he’d been waiting, or watching—fuck knows, maybe he just walked in just now because the universe hates Tony Stark, usually. But he’s sprinting, falling to his knees at Barnes’ side and running hands, familiar as fuck and shaking visibly as he touches Barnes’ body, as he reaches almost terrified for Barnes’ neck to find what Tony already knows he’ll find.

 

Nothing.

 

“Fuck,” Tony breathes, stunned still, heart his own throat, because fuck. _Fuck_.

 

“Get _help_!” Steve screams, his voice cracking, echoing: broken, breaking, dying on its own and Tony just stares, just stares.

 

Can’t move.

 

The medical staff rushes in nevertheless, and Steve’s hateful eyes finally release Tony from his full-body lockjaw, and as Barnes’ lifeless body is carried from the room, Tony slumps against the control panels and begins to tremble, because _fuck_. He’s always missed the obvious, but this. He, the obvious, he—

 

He just killed James fucking Barnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com). Where I think I am still offering to write prompts for lovely people who drop me asks, [if that's what you're into](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY8jaGs7xJ0).

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
